Presence: Collected Stories

The collected short fiction of America’s leading dramatist of the 20th century in a Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition

Though best known for creating some of the greatest dramas of the twentieth century, Arthur Miller was also a master of the short story. Initially published in prestigious venues like the New Yorker, the Atlantic, and Esquire, his fiction constitutes a fascinating and indispensable portion of his life’s work. Presence: Collected Stories revives and reintroduces these masterly works, making available in one volume stories previously scattered across various collections. Here, as in his best plays, Miller pulls apart the threads of American life with tender humanism and unmatched psychological realism. These stories build on the landscape of Miller’s drama, of Broadway dives and Brooklyn shipyards where businessmen, writers, bums, and blue-collar workers struggle for self-worth. This vital collection celebrates not just the Miller we know through his most often-performed plays, but the whole of his astounding depth as an artist.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.